"Adversity makes you stronger. Don't give in, don't back down and never stop doing what you know is right. Nothing worth doing ever, ever, ever came easy and the more righteous your fight, the more opposition that you will face." --TRUMP

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The role of global warming in this year's news is summed up in the recently concluded Paris Agreement: a gigantic international meeting held within a month of a massive terrorist attack on that city, for the purpose of diverting everyone's attention away from the threat of terrorism.

"After last month's massive terrorist attack brought the disastrous civil war in Syria and the renewed threat of radical Islam back to the forefront of everyone's minds, world leaders met in Paris to forge an ambitious agreement--about global warming.

"You didn't think they were going to do something big and important about terrorism, did you?

"No, they're much more interested in what our own president clearly regards as the real issue of the day, 'climate change.' And so the global warming conference ended with the Paris Agreement, which was hailed by both The Guardian and Slate as the 'end of the fossil fuel era.'"

I also noted that, for all that triumphalism about ending fossil fuels, the Paris Agreement is just a massive pretense in which "everything is legally binding, except the actual heart of the agreement." But I noted that it serves a purpose.

"Consider President Obama's pronouncement that the agreement is 'a testament to American leadership.' 'We came together around a strong agreement the world needed. We met the moment.' For a president whose administration is known for the absence of American leadership and who is palpably not 'meeting the moment,' you can see the incentive to pretend that he is by signing some phony-baloney agreement to solve a phony-baloney problem."

The intellectual basis for this evasion is summed up in the preposterous claim that global warming caused ISIS. After tracing the actual causes and origins of the Syrian civil war, I noted:

"All of these facts are readily available to anyone who follows the news. And then there is the role in these attacks of a major world religion with about a billion followers that has been around for 1400 years--a primary cause that is a little hard to miss. Yet President Obama, [Bill] Nye, and many other water-carriers for the left offer us glib pronouncements about how this is all about water shortages in Syria. This is spectacular, willful ignorance dressed up as love for science."

This is the reason Obama doesn't have much of a strategy for destroying ISIS and recently admitted that he was out of touch about how important the Paris attacks were, because he didn't watch enough cable news shows. I don't even know where to start in describing how pathetic that is.

But the left does have a plan to vilify and censor global warming skeptics, with New York's attorney general launching an investigation to punish Exxon-Mobil for having briefly funded a few climate skeptics.

"To be sure, this case will take forever to go through the courts.... But this is another case where the prosecution is the punishment. Just the prospect of being dragged through the courts and publicly maligned by prosecutors is deterrent enough.

"This prosecution is not really aimed at Exxon, which has pockets deep enough to fight if it chooses.... [T]he real target is everybody smaller than Exxon. The message is going out that they will face political reprisals, including embarrassing and expensive persecution in the courts, if they ever give a dollar to a climate skeptic....

"It seems Schneiderman has learned from the neo-authoritarians in Russia and China how to impose political control. There is no need for anything so crude as outright censorship. Anybody can say what they like, if they're shouting on a street corner or writing in the pages of some obscure journal for intellectuals. But nobody can get any money to broadcast their views more widely because anyone with money faces ruin if they stand out against the powers that be."

And President Obama has a plan of attack for destroying our most plentiful sources of energy, under the guise of a transition to "clean power." This "clean power," as I explained, is based on absurd assumptions and is scientifically impossible.

"So why create a national electricity scheme that is impossible to build? Perhaps because its purpose is not to build but to tear down. If you come up with a plan that claims it will reduce existing sources of energy in favor of new sources of energy--and those new sources turn out to be speculative at best, and physically impossible at worst--then it's fair to conclude that the real essence of the plan is simply to reduce existing sources of energy."

So our leaders are dispirited and ineffective when it comes to deciding on a plan to destroy our actual enemies--but apply endless vigor and initiative to coming up with plans to dismantle our own civilization.

The delusion that global warming is the only really important issue of our era, eclipsing everything else, is embraced by elites in all areas of the culture. It benefits from the kind of universal dissemination characteristic of a new religion--which is reflected in the inroads it has made in converting leaders of the old religion.

Thus, for example, Christians are under unprecedented attack in the Middle East. Syrian Christians who speak the language of Christ, Aramaic, and whose churches were first established by the Apostles themselves, have survived for 2000 years but are now fleeing the expansion of ISIS. Yet Pope Francis, who should be one of their most outspoken champions, has been devoting much more of his time as a partisan shill for global warming. I pointed out the totally one-sided presentation of the scientific claims about global warming in the Pope's latest encyclical.

"Francis is just repeating what he has heard from mainstream environmentalists and international green activists. The problem is that those are apparently the only people he is listening to....

"Pope Francis has sealed himself off in an ideological bubble that is harder and more impenetrable than the Popemobile. He refuses to recognize that there are alternative ideas outside the leftist orthodoxy on capitalism and the environment. The result is a sense that I've never quite gotten before from a papal encyclical: the sense of the pope as a narrow ideologue, captive to a relatively recent political fad.

"This is a real shame because the Vatican and the papacy are supposed to operate on a longer time scale, less affected by the political fads of the moment, or even of the century. After all, the Catholic Church is a 2,000-year-old institution with a timeless spiritual remit. It's what usually makes the popes so interesting to contend with, even for an atheist who frequently disagrees with them."

But Francis has a whole history of merging leftist politics with religion in a kind of "reverse syncretism," a trend I discussed after a Latin American socialist gave Francis a "Marxifix," a bizarre mash-up of the crucifix and the hammer and sickle.

"I am not a Catholic nor even a Christian, and I know many American Protestants who, shall we say, were never deeply invested in the moral authority of the pope. So what does it matter to us whether or not this pope is surrendering the Church to the left?

"Historically, it does matter, because in the 20th century the Church helped change the course of history, vastly for the better, by offering ideological and material resistance to Communism. It mattered that there was a large institution with deep historical roots that was independent from the socialist state and politically correct orthodoxy, driven a different set of values. And it's discomforting to think what might happen if that's no longer true."

The religion of global warming is being invoked as a reason to overturn every big institution in our society, from Wall Street to the Vatican. Yet this is just another false god, based on an illusion.

That's why the biggest theme in my coverage of global warming this year was fighting to reassert a truly scientific outlook in the face of pseudo-scientific propaganda. I debunked the claim that 2014 was the "hottest year on record." Expect a repeat for 2015, if they can fudge the numbers enough. And expect that the real data will indicate the same thing: that 2015 was about as warm as 2014, which was about as warm as 2010 and 2005. Climate stasis, a plateau in temperatures that has lasted nearly 20 years now, will be re-defined as a runaway increase, in a testament to the warmists' dedication to post-facto rationalization.

"There is an important difference between prediction before the fact and explanation after the fact. Prediction requires that you lay down a marker about what the data ought to be, to be consistent with your theory, before you actually know what it is. That's something that's very hard to get right. If your theory is going to be able to consistently predict data before it is gathered, it has got to be pretty darned good. Global warming theories have a wretched track record at making predictions.

"But explanations of data after the fact are a lot easier. As they say, hindsight is 20/20. It's a lot easier to tweak your theory to make it a better fit to the data, or in this case, to tweak the way the data is measured and analyzed in order to make it better fit your theory. And then you proclaim how amazing it is that your theory 'explains' the data."

"But by now you can get an idea for the major outlines of an environmental hysteria. The steps are: a) start with assumption that man is 'ravaging the Earth,' b) latch onto an unproven scientific hypothesis that fits this preconception, c) extrapolate wildly from half-formed theories and short-term trends to predict a future apocalypse, d) pressure a bunch of people with 'Ph.D.' after their names to endorse it so you can say it's a consensus of experts, e) get the press to broadcast it with even less nuance and get a bunch of Hollywood celebrities who failed Freshman biology to adopt it as their pet cause, then finally f) quietly drop the whole thing when it doesn't pan out--and move on with undiminished enthusiasm to the next environmental doomsday scenario."

I traced that pattern with five more recent debunked claims, including an astonishing and eye-opening report about "horizontal gene transfer." Seriously, the article is worth reading if only for that one piece of genuine science.

Most fundamentally, I examined what it would really take to prove that catastrophic global warming is happening and that humans are causing it. No one ever lays out the steps it would take, because if they did, they would have to acknowledge how far they are from proving it.

That's the same reason they're elevating the imagined threat of global warming over real and immediate threats like terrorism: because they don't want to grapple with the implications. Terrorism is a problem that calls for solutions the left doesn't want to pursue--whereas global warming calls for solutions they have been longing to implement for more than a century. It's almost as if they called the problem into existence for precisely that reason.

Hence the monumental absurdity of events like the Paris climate summit. The more important other issues become--the more our political leaders are called upon to deal with problems whose solutions don't fit their agenda--the more they have to double down on the failed predictions, overinflate the phantom threat, project it as the real root of every other problem, and then proclaim every minor, ineffectual attempt to address the problem as a historic achievement of bold leadership.

But behind this there is a palpable desperation. Global warming persistently remains near the bottom of voter's priorities--while terrorism is back on the top of the list. It seems that the more they try to puff up their phantom menace, the more insubstantial is appears alongside all of our real problems.

I'll continue tomorrow with item #4, an issue that I have not covered as much as I would like, to which I'm planning to return with the luxury of being able to make some deeper philosophical observations.

In the meantime, please take advantage of our Holiday Sale. The Tracinski Letter also makes a great Christmas gift. On the payment page, just under where you enter your own e-mail address, you will be prompted to enter the gift recipient's e-mail address and any gift message or instructions. I'll add the recipient to the list and make sure they get a notice of the gift. Order by noon on December 24, and I can guarantee that the recipient will get their first edition by e-mail that afternoon.

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WORDS OF WISDOM

"Ideas power men. Men power cultures. Cultures power civilizations. Civilizations power history. Ideas are the fuel of man's mind. (Ayn Rand)

It is not a question of whether man chooses to be guided by [philosophy]: he is not equipped to live without it." (Ayn Rand)"History is philosophy teaching by example "(Lord Bolingbroke)

"The trouble with nations is that there is an unequal distribution of capitalism. "(Rush Limbaugh)

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. "(Thomas Jefferson)

Marine Corps Poster Art

Marine Corps Poster Art

Marine Corps Poster Art

Right Brain..Left Brain

The Grand Alliance

The British Lion

The Popular KORAN Flush

The New Napoleon

Islamofascists Beware!

Full Gunishment

One Small Fist

A Good Islamofascist

Islam Defined

Toothpaste Conspiracy

The Right Exposed

Islamophobic

Standing With Israel

I'm A Fan Of....

FRIEND OF ISRAEL

Uncle Sam Says:

ATLAS SHRUGGED

ANTHEM

Orson Welles Quotation

"You know what the fellow said: In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock." -Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man

"No" To EU

Club Gitmo

Did You know?

90%-95% OF ALL THE CONFLICTS ON THIS PLANET TODAY INVOLVE MUSLIMS FIGHTING NON-MUSLIMS OR EACH OTHER.

Muslims Eat Their Own Children

"Speaking through an American interpreter, Lieutenant David Wallach who is a native Arabic speaker, the Iraqi official related how al Qaeda united these gangs who then became absorbed into “al Qaeda.” They recruited boys born during the years 1991, 92 and 93 who were each given weapons, including pistols, a bicycle and a phone (with phone cards paid) and a salary of $100 per month, all courtesy of al Qaeda. These boys were used for kidnapping, torturing and murdering people.At first, he said, they would only target Shia, but over time the new al Qaeda directed attacks against Sunni, and then anyone who thought differently. The official reported that on a couple of occasions in Baqubah, al Qaeda invited to lunch families they wanted to convert to their way of thinking. In each instance, the family had a boy, he said, who was about 11 years old. As LT David Wallach interpreted the man’s words, I saw Wallach go blank and silent. He stopped interpreting for a moment. I asked Wallach, “What did he say?” Wallach said that at these luncheons, the families were sat down to eat. And then their boy was brought in with his mouth stuffed. The boy had been baked. Al Qaeda served the boy to his family." -- Michael Yon

IDEA POWER

"Ideas power men. Men power cultures. Cultures power civilizations. Civilizations power history. Ideas are the fuel of man's mind.

It is not a question of whether man chooses to be guided by [philosophy]: he is not equipped to live without it." (Ayn Rand)

"History is philosophy teaching by example "(Lord Bolingbroke)

"The trouble with nations is that there is an unequal distribution of capitalism. "(Rush Limbaugh)

"Shake off all the fears of servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call on her tribunal for every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason than that of blindfolded fear. "(Thomas Jefferson)

Teddy Roosevelt

T.R. On Islam

The following passages were written in 1916 in Teddy Roosevelt’s book, “Fear God and Take Your Own Part”, reproduced in “What Every American Needs to Know About the Qur’an” by William Federer.Christianity is not the creed of Asia and Africa at this moment solely because the seventh century Christians of Asia and Africa had trained themselves not to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to fight.Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, an on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated. Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressor. …..The civilization of Europe, American and Australia exists today at all only because of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization because of victories through the centuries from Charles Martel in the eighth century and those of John Sobieski in the seventeenth century. During the thousand years that included the careers of the Frankish soldier and the Polish king, the Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors; and in consequence Christianity practically vanished from the two continents; and today, nobody can find in them any “social values” whatever, in the sense in which we use the words, so far as the sphere of Mohammedan influences are concerned.There are such “social values” today in Europe, America and Australia only because during those thousand years, the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do — that is, to beat back the Moslem invader.

.....victorious with terror

"I have been made victorious with terror"

Narrated Abu Huraira: Allah's Apostle said, "I have been sent with the shortest expressions bearing the widest meanings, and I have been made victorious with terror (cast in the hearts of the enemy), and while I was sleeping, the keys of the treasures of the world were brought to me and put in my hand." Abu Huraira added: Allah's Apostle has left the world and now you, people, are bringing out those treasures (i.e. the Prophet did not benefit by them). Fighting for the Cause of Allah (Jihaad) Translation of Sahih Bukhari, Book 52: Volume 4, Book 52, Number 220

THE S.E.A.L. MOTTO

We train for war and fight to win. I stand ready to bring the full spectrum of combat power to bear in order to achieve my mission and the goals established by my country. The execution of my duties will be swift and violent when required, yet guided by the very principles I serve to defend.

Brave men have fought and died building the proud tradition and feared reputation that I am bound to uphold. In the worst of conditions, the legacy of my teammates steadies my resolve and silently guides my every deed. I will not fail.

The Freedom Fighter's Journal

This Blog is dedicated to the heroic men and women of the world past and present who have stood up for liberty often at the cost of their lives; lives often spent in dubious battle against the forces of tyranny; lives that often end at the end of the tyrant's rope and the anonymous grave; but whose last thoughts often echo the words of Nathan Hale, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."

Brilliant and Psychotic

"The Freedom Fighter’s Journal. Written by Ronbo, this BLOG is scary! Vacillating between brilliant and psychotic, if you come back often enough you will find yourself wondering if this is the writing of a tortured patriotic soul or that of a demented spirit awaiting the next white room vacancy in central Florida. But what matters is that the topics make you stop and think! And after all, this is the “Thinking Bloggers Award.” -- THE GRAY DOG

RONBO

The Freedom Fighter

Danger To The West

The biggest danger to the West is this climate of defeatism, appeasement, and cultural collapse now on display for the Islamists to see. This is the single biggest impetus to Islamist terrorism. We all have to grasp that terrorism is not the biggest threat we face. The biggest threat is the ideology that drives it. It’s not enough to fight terror, vital though that is. The principal battleground is the world of ideas, the battle for hearts and minds. The Islamists see this very clearly. They understand that psychological warfare — the fomenting of paranoia, resentment, hysteria, and demoralization — is their most effective weapon. If they can hijack the human mind to the cause of hatred and lies, they have an army; and if they can bamboozle and demoralize their victims, they will win.